Oh Christmas Tree!

 

June & Marshall Peters joined us for Christmas
and were surely impressed with our mountain
grown Christmas tree - 1983

For our first Chiang Mai Christmas we bought a live turkey for Christmas dinner. It was more memorable than good. That same Christmas, in the same Baw Kaew area where we got the turkey, we also cut our own Christmas tree. Though reminiscent of a Charlie Brown tree, it gave us a little holiday cheer. But, it was also an introduction to the complicated situation of land ownership, tree ownership, forestry and lumber in Thailand.

I’m not sure if we knew it at the time or not, but cutting the tree and using it for our Christmas tree was actually illegal. In Thailand, it was explained to us, even if a person owns a piece of land, that person does not own the trees on the land. Even if they plant a tree, once it grows and is attached to the land they own, the tree belongs to the Thai government. So, to cut a tree is taking government property and is therefore, illegal. Of course, there were government sanctioned logging operations harvesting logs nationwide but they were subject to some mysterious legal and financial process likely designed to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful. Alas, our Christmas tree was not part of a legally sanctioned lumbering operation and we noticed no significant increase in our personal power and wealth.

Of course, there are laws and then there are loopholes. As I recall, the government only owned the live
trees. Dead trees could be cut down. This resulted in lots of people “girdling” (chopping through the bark and into the tree in a ring completely around the tree) their trees, preferably in the dead of night so no one would see. Girdling just a couple inches deep would prevent the flow of nutrients from the roots up to the rest of the tree and the tree would soon die. Drive anywhere in northern Thailand and girdled trees were everywhere. Imagine the good fortune of a land owner that woke up one morning to a girdled teak tree on his property. Certainly, he had no idea how it got girdled (wink, wink) but it was soon dead and then he was free to cut it down, saw it into lumber and finish building his house.

Forested mountains south of Mae Sot
near the Burma Border

But land ownership is also murky in Thailand, especially in the “Hilltribe” areas populated by a variety of minority groups. Historically, the Thai government has been quite ambivalent about granting citizenship to these minorities especially in the remote areas of Northwest Thailand. And, since only citizens can own property, there are vast areas considered government owned land even though there have been villages of a variety of people groups living there for decades or even centuries. In the government’s eyes, these people are “encroaching” on government land. So they are illegal from the get-go and if they cut a tree or two or clear slash and burn fields to grow rice, they are doubly illegal.

Complicating matters is Burma/Myanmar where there are 135 officially recognized ethnic minority groups. Many of these ethnic groups have been fighting unsuccessfully for independence since the end of WWII. So for decades, as the Burma military pushed east, the people fled ahead of the army until many wound up in Thailand. Even the Thai and Burmese governments still don’t completely agree on exactly where the border is between the two countries so for many years, those fleeing the Burma army didn’t really know or care if they were in Thailand or Burma. They just wanted to be somewhere where they were not being shot.

Meanwhile, the Thai government wasn’t all that interested in the Thai/Burma border areas. I suppose it was seen as a buffer between the two countries who have a long history of conflict. So, if the “Hilltribes” could keep the Burmese contained, so much the better. That would allow the Thai government to develop the ethnic “Thai” portions of Thailand.

Attitudes toward the minority peoples began to change though as the previous Thai King (the father of the current King) began to travel to the Hilltribe areas. He and the Queen began various development projects and generally accepted the (ethnically) non-Thai tribal people as worthy of citizenship. The government then began offering citizenship to some in the more remote areas and, I believe, these efforts continue today.

A ridge top village along the road

But, it is complicated. Go back in history far enough and everybody migrated from somewhere, even the dominant Thai. So at what point in time were people coming from Burma, China, India or anywhere else actually encroaching on Thai land and at what point were they just settling there? A thousand years ago? A hundred years ago? Twenty years ago? How can you tell the difference between long-time residents and new arrivals? Even if the Thai government accepts people as citizens, what about the land? Do they already own it if they have been there for a certain length of time? How long is long enough?  The government had no real presence in the past so there are no land ownership documents. So, what documentation if any is needed? How do you know if they have actually been there as long as they say?

What about the trees on the Hilltribe land? The forests throughout most of Thailand have already been cut so currently, much of the best remaining forest land is only found in the Hilltribe areas. Planners in Bangkok looking at maps say these large swaths of forest land are now government owned even though numerous villages have been there close to forever. The government of course, would love to get it’s hands on the money those forests represent but at the same time (to one level or another) they also recognize the people living there need to survive. And survival means access to the land and the forests.

Slowly, the Thai government and the people in the border areas are working through these issues and more. Meanwhile, our poor, little, illegal, Christmas tree was not ever-green. It turned to dust and we bought an artificial Christmas tree.